FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT PUBLIC HEALTH - PAGE 2

In a recent column Joan Beck states: "... (I)t would be sad, indeed, if going to the dentist or the doctor had to be added to behavior that puts people at risk for AIDS." We can all agree on that point. Unfortunately, the underlying issue is missed. When emotions are inflamed, logic and scientific evidence can fall by the wayside. What is the solution to the fear of AIDS infection in health care facilities? Not the testing of health care personnel, for several reasons: In the millions of dental patient visits over the past 10 years, the Florida case in which a young woman allegedly contracted AIDS from her dentist appears to be the only instance in which patients were exposed to the HIV virus.

In "Salmonella and public health" (April 23), The Tribune editorial observed that "The department should be headed by an expert in public health, not a lawyer or a bureacrat or a crony of the governor." This is a refreshing reversal of The Tribune's endorsement of the phase-out of the Illinois Sanitarian Registration Act in an editorial on March 3, 1981, "They shoe horses, don`t they?" That act established professional competency guidelines for the public health sanitarians who, among other responsibilities, are charged with protecting our milk and food supplies.

Paul Allen, a feisty public health advocate who co-founded the Community Counseling Centers of Chicago, died Monday of cancer in Ravenswood Hospital. A resident of Chicago's Uptown community, he was 55. A native of Missouri, Mr. Allen was a VISTA volunteer in the 1960s and earned his master's degree from the University of Illinois School of Public Health in 1975. After settling in Uptown in the late 1960s, Mr. Allen saw a strong need for community-based mental health care because state hospitals were discharging scores of patients.

I write to support and endorse Quentin Young's "Profit-making: bad medicine?" in the May 4 edition of The Tribune. Health care in America is rapidly reaching a new watershed. The concept that health care is a "right" is increasingly imperiled as the federal government fights relentlessly to contain soaring health costs. In a sense, the medically indigent are the innocent victims of this good war. Many come from the ranks of the recently and/or temporarily unemployed, too well off to qualify for welfare and yet too "poor" to afford the health care they need.

January is the time for resolutions and as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, Dr. Bechara Choucair is responsible for the wellness goals of an entire city. The department recently created a new public health agenda called "Healthy Chicago" that identified 12 priorities, including promoting healthy mothers and babies. One of the city's first events was a prenatal health fair Tuesday in the Englewood neighborhood. Choucair received his medical degree from American University of Beirut and did his family practice residency at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Nothing less than a complete restructuring of Chicago's public health care system is what Mayor Richard M. Daley wants from the nine individuals he named to his new Board of Health on Tuesday. He's asking them to take on a long list of urgent urban health problems, particularly the city's distressing infant mortality, lagging efforts on AIDS and indequate programs of lead detection and food inspection. Daley also charged the new board with conducting a nationwide search for a new commissioner of public health to replace the controversial Dr. Lonnie Edwards, who resigned, as he said he would, when the new mayor was elected.

Cook County Hospital has been home to Chicago's poor and sick for more than 100 years. For about the same amount of time, the city's Health Department has provided mother-baby care and other health services. The recent disaccreditation of Cook County Hospital, coincident with the closing of city clinics, leaves those involved in and dependent on public health care fearful about the direction of our local public health system. Many have begun to question the need for a public hospital.

Unofficially and alone, two men with different missions eyed each other across a luncheon table, each talking in the consciously vague language of diplomats as they explored the problems of the decrepit Cook County Hospital, source of medical care for most of the city's poor. In that meeting last spring, George Dunne, president of the Cook County Board, and Stanley Ikenberry, president of the University of Illinois, skirted the central issues-the need for a new County Hospital and the worsening financial condition of the U. of I. Hospital, which does not have enough patients to fill its beds.

Amid a seemingly endless period of national and international public health crises, the American Medical Association turned to Dr. Ronald Davis for a key leadership role in the future of the nation's largest doctor group. A preventive medicine specialist from East Lansing, Mich., Davis was elected last week by the AMA's policymaking House of Delegates to serve as the organization's president-elect, a key part of a three-person team that speaks on behalf of the group on critical issues.

Most Americans are not confident in the health-care system's ability to respond to a biological, chemical or nuclear attack, according to a survey released Tuesday. The Columbia University poll found that 39 percent of Americans trust the public health system in the event of a major terrorist attack. The number is down from 46 percent in 2003 and 53 percent in 2002. "The health-care system is decidedly not ready to cope with a major crisis of the type that might include these very aggressive weapons," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the university's National Center for Disaster Preparedness.